Laika, the Oregon-based stop-motion animation house, has a perfect track record of Best Animated Feature Oscar nominations for its first four films: Coraline, ParaNorman, Missing Link, And Kubo and the two ropes. With his latest project, and undoubtedly the most ambitious Wild wood, the streak could well continue. This film has been in the works at Laika for 16 years, finally starting production in 2021 and making its world premiere today at the London Film Festival. There are also plans to open AFI Fest later this month for its North American premiere in Hollywood.
For director-producer Travis Knight, who is also CEO of Laika, this adaptation of Colin Meloy’s book was a personal dream, especially since the setting of the book, and now the film, takes place in his hometown of Portland, Oregon. How could he resist? A vast fantasy right in your own backyard featuring a magical forbidden forest of talking animals mixed with humans? All of this becomes the center of a truly epic story that seems born to be on the big screen. The painstaking process of stop-motion animation applied to a tale of a scale rarely seen on this level is a visual coup de grace, and the story is compelling and centers on a scrappy young heroine determined to fight and save her little brother after he is painfully snatched from the streets of Portland by a murder of crows.
Prue McKeel (beautifully voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is a loyal and loving teenager who promises her parents that she will take good care of her little brother Mac during a normal outing on a sunny day. This proves frightening when Mac is caught by a menacing swarm of black crows who descend from the sky in unison and fly away with him. Her frantic efforts to catch up fail and she sees the birds disappearing into the adjoining Forbidden Forest known for allowing no outsiders. Unable to return home and explain to her parents (Maya Erskine and Jake Johnson), she goes looking for Mac and brings him back. It’s no easy task, but his rather clumsy and much less adventurous classmate, Curtis Mehlberg (Jacob Tremblay), offers what help he can, which isn’t much. However, he begins to follow her into the forest where, after an encounter with the imposing uniformed coyotes who patrol the area, he separates from Prue.
Soon the two are swept up, in individual pieces, into this world like something out of Lewis Carroll, as they go down the rabbit hole into a society like no other – a land of talking animals, bandits, wise owls, even a loyal rat and more. For Curtis, it involves meeting the evil dowager housekeeper Alexandra (Carey Mulligan) who tries to bring him into her fold. She is a woman devastated by the death of her only son, so much so that she can no longer function and turns her grief into nothing good, with the strength of the coyote in step with her dark ambitions. When Curtis sees what she is doing, he refuses and is thrown in prison with other rejects.
Meanwhile, Prue, meeting the General (Angela Bassett), the wise Great Eagle leader of the Avian Principality, as well as Brendan, the empathetic leader of the outcast bandits, uses all her intuitions to navigate the dense landscape. Ultimately, all roads lead her to Alexandra, who lies to her. She encourages him to return to his parents, telling him that it is best for a grieving mother to know the truth about what happened to her child. Prue follows the advice, confesses what happened to Mac and discovers the secret her parents always kept from her.
There’s plenty more to come in this two-hour-plus adaptation, including a battle royale that will see Prue return for a massive fight to the end, still hoping for a happy ending.
Featuring six-time Academy Award nominated cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (The black stallion) working on an animated film for the first time, the visual palette based in part on the book’s beautiful illustrations by Caron Ellis is breathtaking. Deschanel makes the stop-motion process feel like live action, with the camera capturing the character’s heartbreak and triumph in a way I’ve never seen before in this form. Knight is a born storyteller, so the emphasis is always on that, and while the visuals are quite impressive in their own right, they never overwhelm. Character development is key here, as it was in the book, and each is fully developed. Among them is Bassett’s commanding eagle, General; Brendan (with powerful vocals by Mahershala Ali), leader of the bandits; Maksim (Tom Waits), faithful coyote infantryman of the dowager governess; the royal Iphigenia (Tantoo Cardinal); the clumsy coyote Dmitri (Charlie Day); the reclusive aging owl Rex (Richard E. Grant); and Septima, a little rat who rises to the occasion and will break your heart (wonderfully voiced by Awkwafina).
There is no doubt that Meloy created this radical story in the tradition of other epics like Lord of the Rings And Chronicles of Narnia, and although Wildwood isn’t quite at the top of that mountain, it deftly marches to its own drummer, a story of heartbreak, courage, determination and triumph, and yet another stop-motion gem from Laika that stays in the heart.
The producers are Knight and Sam Wilson.
Title: Wildwood
Festival: London
Distributer: Breaststroke
Release date: October 23, 2026
Director: Travis Knight
Screenwriter: Chris Butler
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Angela Bassett, Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina, Maya Erskine, Jake Johnson, Charlie Day, Tom Waits, Richard E. Grant, Amanda Stenberg, Tantoo Cardinal, Len Cariou, Marc Evan Jackson
Rating: PG-13
Operating time: 2h 12m
Gn entert
